


Once Upon a Pair of Wheels

by betts



Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Not gay enough, Post-Canon, Unsafe Sex, i just want these characters to be happy ok, shockingly hetero, sorry gay jesus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: If Baby had seen the man or recognized his voice, he wouldn’t have turned around when the guy called, “Hey, Baby!” loud enough over the music and the high-pitched permanent whine in his eardrums.If Baby had known, he would have run.





	Once Upon a Pair of Wheels

**Author's Note:**

> Well somebody had to write a Baby/Debora first time fic.
> 
> If you want to follow along with the music, [here's the playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/sadrobots/playlist/7JhIcyO7dlMSv4r74NH9FC).
> 
> Title from S&G's "Baby Driver."

Baby wasn’t paying a lick of attention when a broad shoulder checked him walking down the sidewalk. He was carrying a coffee—three creams, three sugars—and adjusted his body accordingly to keep from spilling it as he stumbled, which meant he didn’t look at the man who had run into him. A stupid mistake; retirement put Baby off his game.

If he had seen the man or recognized his voice, he wouldn’t have turned around when the guy called, “Hey, Baby!” loud enough over the music and the high-pitched permanent whine in his eardrums.

If Baby had known, he would have run.

But Baby didn’t know, didn’t think about how he’d been going by Miles ever since he got out of jail, and the only ones who called him Baby anymore—that old, tired codename—were people he didn’t want to know. And Debora.

A wolfish smile greeted him under slicked-back hair and a tangle of tattoos, a pair of aviators perched on his bulbous nose. Griff’s arms were outstretched as he approached, as if they were old friends. When he saw Baby wasn’t about to greet him with the same antagonistic warmth, he clapped him on the unchecked shoulder.

“B-A-B-Y Baby, how you been?” Griff asked. Baby couldn’t hear him over the Kinks’ “Strangers” on his Tuesday afternoon iPod, a teal sixth gen he got at a yard sale for ten bucks, but he read his lips.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Baby said.

“What?”

“‘If you don’t see me again, it’s because I’m dead,’” Baby parroted. From the elevator. Six years ago.

It took Griff a moment to get on board. He huffed an awkward laugh and clapped Baby’s shoulder again, but this time his hand remained. Baby stared at it from behind his Raybans, then glanced back at Griff. The grin he was receiving wasn’t the polite kind, but the I’m-gonna-need-you-to-do-something-for-me kind. The and-if-you-don’t-I’ll-break-your-legs kind. He was glad Debora wasn’t around, she was visiting her aunt in Miami, and truth told, Baby was getting a little bored, but he was hoping for a stroke of musical inspiration, a good bit of conversation overheard and undervalued, not a ghost from his past. He reached into his pocket and clicked on his tape recorder.

“I ain’t dead,” Griff said, still gripping his arm, still smiling with sharp teeth. “I’m alive and well and I’m gonna take you out to lunch.”

Of course they went to Bo’s. Of course Baby got a warm welcome—“Hi Miles!”—and a wary glance toward Griff, who gave the same wary glance to Baby and said, “Miles?”

Baby shrugged. Griff picked a booth a couple down from the one Baby usually sat in.

The first few seconds dragged on, Baby sitting perfectly still, now listening to Wilco’s “Kingpin;” Griff fidgeting mercilessly, glancing out the window like someone was watching him, casing the restaurant and clocking the cameras, the employees, the registers, like a good criminal. Like a good criminal still doing crime. Like a good criminal about to force Baby to do some more crime.

The server came by, Debora’s friend Stacy, who took pride in the number of songs she had, her favorite being “Stacy’s Mom.” They’d had a long conversation about it once, she and Debora and Baby, and by conversation, Baby meant they talked and he listened, occasionally clicking on his recorder in his pocket to catch Debora’s laugh and the clever things she sometimes said, and the best part of it was that under the table Debora was holding his hand real tight, thighs pressed together, afraid to stop touching after five whole years apart.

The postcards had helped. Reading his case file—all those nice things people said about him, people he thought he’d wronged—helped. Working helped. Watching racecar driving on the little TV strung up on the wall helped, when people didn’t turn it off to watch _Maury_ or _The_   _Price Is Right_ and whatever else.

All of that helped, but he didn’t have his music. Not a single day for five years. Being locked up wasn’t so bad, all told, but the day-in-day-out ringing felt like it echoed against the cement brick walls and came back at him tenfold. He couldn’t think over it, could barely hear over it, so much worse than it ever was before Buddy had shot off a round by each ear.  

The day he stepped outside and met Debora by that Cadillac like something straight out of _Jailhouse Rock_ , the ringing stopped. Well, it didn’t stop so much as it just didn’t matter anymore, because he was done now, clean as a t-shirt on laundry day. No more running, no more ringing, and all the music in the world.

“Coffee,” Griff told Stacy. “Black.”

Stacy took a note and looked to Baby, who said, “Water.”

She gave him worried eyes and he did his best to give her I’m-okay-really ones back, but he was never too good at expressions. It seemed alright enough for her and she said, “Coffee and a water,” with a dot of her pencil on the pad, and walked away.

Griff clasped his meaty hands together on the table and said, “So what’s it been? Three years? Four?”

“Six,” Baby said. New song, BRMC’s “Ain’t No Easy Way.”

“Damn, six years.” Griff thoughtfully rubbed the scruff of his cheek with his hand. “Still look like you just crawled out of your mama.”

It was a comment that didn’t require a response, so Baby didn’t offer one. He didn’t look at the menu because he knew it by heart anyway, and he also knew he wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t order anything. Right now was one of those few times he wished he had a cell phone like Debora had been insisting recently, so he could text her under the table, but he continued to refuse, saying there were plenty of landlines left in Atlanta and she was the only one he talked to on the phone anyway, Joe not being able to use them. Baby saw Joe every Sunday, and was the only reason they were still in Atlanta, other than Bo’s which treated Debora well enough work-wise and held sentimental value for Baby.

And Debora, well, they lived together now, the two of them, in a studio apartment where they had a mattress on the floor and some loft windows overlooking the city. Baby had a corner for his music stuff and Debora had a corner to paint in, and in the middle they had a little TV above a dusty VCR, where they played recorded VHS tapes they collected from flea markets and ate popcorn all night long. Debora received a little inheritance money from her mom but used it mostly to take art classes at a community college, so they lived on Debora’s diner wages and Baby’s pizza delivery tips. On late work nights, he found himself missing a bit of his old life, the thrills and excitement of it all, and felt immediately guilty whenever these thoughts would barrel into his head through the music and the ringing and the daydreaming about Debora. It would be nice to have money again, purpose again, direction and drive again, but those things were hard to come by living clean.

Not that Baby was complaining. This was the life he’d always wanted, rather the best life he could imagine for himself. For a long time he considered a good future one where he had a future at all and nobody was on his tail or trying to kill him. The one or two times he mentioned it to Debora, these taxing thoughts, she told him he suffered from Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome and then kissed him, and whenever she did that all his thoughts went away and he never wanted for anything.

Before jail, their kisses were rushed, every moment on the edge of a knife, but once he got out, they took their time. It was the first time Baby had been slow with anything in his entire life. He didn’t know how to start...things, but Debora was patient with him, put his hand on her bare knee on rides home and he’d get the courage to inch it up to her thigh. She’d let out a pleased sigh at the movement but then stop him from going any further. Not yet, she’d say, biting her lip, giving him those soft eyes that shone under backroad street lights, and Baby didn’t think he could be as crazy for anyone as he was for her.

Then they got their apartment together and Debora would change clothes right in front of him, her back to him, unbuttoning her diner uniform and letting it slip from her shoulders to step out of. She’d reach behind her and unclasp her bra, look over her shoulder at him with a dimpled smile as she let it fall from her arms. Don’t look, she’d say, and he recorded it once, put it on a tape—one of the gold ones, DON’T LOOK scrawled on the side in black ballpoint pen. He listened to it before his shifts at Goodfellas, lying in the bed that smelled like her, knowing he’d see her again in a few hours. Drowning in it, he thought, in love, in love, in love.

Behind his eyes every time he blinked was that image of her, arm across her breasts, nothing but a pair of panties and a couple feet of space separating them, close enough to reach out and touch. But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t, not until she said so—

Stacy came back with the water and coffee. The next song came on, "Hold Tight!" right to the beat of Stacy setting down each glass.

“You know what you want to order?”

“Club sandwich and fries,” Griff said. He pursed his lips and amended, “No fries, salad. Vinaigrette if you got it.” Then he looked at Baby and explained, “Cholesterol.”

Baby was thankful it was his turn to order, because he didn’t know what to make of that, so he looked to Stacy and said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”

“Nothing?” Stacy asked.

“C’mon, pal," Griff said, "whatever you want. It’s on me.”

“The usual,” Baby muttered after a second’s hesitation, and slid his placemat menu back in its spot behind the napkin dispenser. He should be putting up more of a fight, he thought, walking away, or running away, or somehow distancing himself.

“Atta boy,” Griff said, like he had passed some test.

—and one night Debora did, months later, after he’d picked her up from work in their old Cadillac. July, top down, CCR’s “The Midnight Special” on the radio and nothing left to do that night, the whole world—or at least Atlanta—all theirs until dawn. She started giving him directions, left here, she’d say, right at that light, and he knew this city like all the pieces of a car, but he couldn’t figure out where they were headed. Where are we going, he asked, laughing, and she was laughing too. Nowhere special, she said, pointing at the next light for him to turn left. They made it to an overlook outside of the city, the kind you see in movies that might be called Makeout Point. What’s this for, Baby asked, and in response Debora unbuckled her seatbelt and unbuckled his and then crawled across the bench seat and into his lap. His heart was pounding and he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he kept them balled into fists on either side of her knees. She was straddling his thighs, her work uniform skirt riding up, and he kept his eyes trained on hers because she had asked him not to look, remember, he had those words branded into his brain, even though he did look, too often and too obvious, and sometimes she caught him and laughed at him and covered his eyes with her hand.

But now all that not-looking and knee-touching and hand-holding and kissing was going somewhere, somewhere Baby had never gone before, and suddenly the ringing got louder. The engine was off and the windows were up and the July heat made the car feel like an oven and Baby couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe in a good way, his t-shirt clinging with sweat to the small of his back. Debora pulled out the iPod tucked away in the dash and unwound the headphones from it. She put one in Baby’s ear and one in her ear and picked a song, “Sleep Tonight” by Stars, then leaned in and kissed him.

Usually when they kissed it was gentle and sweet, but this one, this one was something else. Debora’s hands were on Baby’s neck and tangled in his hair and his whole body felt like it did when he was driving on a job, like everything in the universe was working together for a single outcome, some greater force guiding his movements. It must have been that greater force that allowed him to run his hands up Debora’s legs, skin hot to the touch, under her skirt, stopping at her hips. He trailed his thumbs over the lacy elastic of her underwear; she shifted against him and he saw stars behind his eyes.

He didn’t make a sound but Debora made a series of sighs by the ear that didn’t have an earbud in it. She reached between them and unbuckled Baby’s belt, unbuttoned, unzipped, reached inside and—

Griff took a slurp of coffee and even made the _ahh_ noise like an old Coca-Cola commercial. Then he said, “Heard you did some time.”

Baby nodded once and didn’t elaborate. Elvis now, “A Little Less Conversation,” one of the remixes.

Griff looked at his fingernails, then shifted his attention out the window. “Heard some bad things went down.”

Baby nodded again.

“You still in the business?”

Baby shook his head and Griff huffed a stunned laugh. “I don’t buy it.”

“Why?” Baby asked before he could think better of it.

“Guys like you ain’t in it for the money.”

“Guys like me?” Baby echoed.

“Robin Hood types. Stealin’ from the rich and all that.”

Baby pursed his lips and looked out the window.

“That’s how you got into it, right?” Griff asked. “Infant jacking rides ‘cause of his tragic past, paying for a brighter future.”

Baby sat silently staring at Griff, wishing he was wearing his sunglasses, but they were in his pocket. If he stayed quiet long enough, Griff would finish antagonizing him and move on to another topic. Baby just wanted this whole thing over with—Griff asking him whatever he wanted to ask him, _I need you to do me a favor_ , he’d say. _You’re the best in the business._ It should have come up by now, guys like Griff didn’t beat around the bush, and Baby didn’t want to think about how much he was anticipating it.

Then Stacy came by with Griff’s salad and set it in front of him.

—Baby gasped. He gripped Debora’s hips to stave off some of the intensity of the feeling, of being touched like this by someone like her, and she smiled against his lips and said something teasing like, Knew you’d be sensitive. Baby started kissing her neck and unbuttoning her uniform like he’d seen her do a hundred times, and he should have been slow about it, but he’d been too slow for too long. He was frantic, and his kisses turned to bites between heavy breaths and Debora’s sighs turned to moans. The Kills’ “U.R.A. Fever” came on next and Debora reached between her legs to shift her underwear aside and graze herself over him. Then she guided him inside of her and sank slowly down.

It was too much, too much feeling, too much loving, too much more than he deserved, but he couldn’t think about any of that now, anything but Debora’s sounds above the music and the ringing, his arms around her back and kissing her throat and chest and breasts, stopping to press his face into the crook of her neck and breathe in, the smell of home, their home, the one they could go back to after this and do it all over again if they wanted. Flames licked up all around him, it felt like spinning through a tumble dryer on high heat. His fingers threaded through Debora’s hair, her scalp damp with sweat, and he rode against the edge of too far, teeth clenched, body taut, like driving, he thought. Just like driving.

My baby, my baby, Debora was saying, even though she’d taken to calling him Miles since he got out, he was fine with it, the old name, being her baby instead of Doc’s. They both owned him, but unlike Doc, Debora treated her possessions with love and care, not brute function. She pressed her forehead against his and reached between her legs to touch herself. He was guiding her with his hands on her hips now, pushing up from the seat to meet each of her movements. Then she was shuddering all around him, moaning, Baby, Baby, and riding the edge of too far became too far, like going off-road, no control of the wheel, body relaxing into the inevitable crash. It hit him like a crash always did, hard and abrupt, but this was the opposite, this was making something new instead of destroying something old.

They came down together kissing and the song changed to “Come Together” by the Beatles and they both laughed. Then shyly, Debora said, Been wanting to do that a long time. And Baby said, Me too. And Debora kissed him again.

Now, Stacy came by a couple minutes later with their food, plates lined up on her arm. “Anything else I can get for you?” she asked after she’d set them down, and Baby shook his head.

“Looks good,” Griff said, and she tore off the check from the pad and set it face-down on the table.

“What’ve you been up to then?” Griff asked, lifting off the top slice of bread and taking off the tomatoes.

Baby didn’t touch his chicken fingers and fries, or even move to put his napkin on his lap. “Pizza delivery,” he admitted, even though he shouldn’t have. If lunch went south, Griff shouldn’t be left with any means of finding him, but Baby had run before and he could run again if he had to.

Griff licked the tomato juice off his thumb. “How’s that working out for you?” he asked, like Baby had asked JD about the hat tattoo, like Tyler Durden asked the narrator in _Fight Club_.

Baby shrugged.

“Gotta be tedious, kid like you with all that talent, forced door to door for minimum plus tips.” Griff said casually, then tore into his sandwich, as if deconstructing the life Baby had worked so hard to build could be boiled down into a benign comment.

“Could be worse,” Baby said. He ate a fry. The song changed to “The Boxer” by Simon & Garfunkel, but the Mumford & Sons version. Baby pulled a face when he checked his iPod—Debora must have snuck it on there.

“Could be better.”

He was right, of course. Baby didn’t so much as speed anymore. He made complete stops at four-way intersections. He always used his turn signal. He went around the block if he saw a cop even though he never did anything wrong nowadays—the residual fear was there, like a bad habit. Maybe that was why he was still sitting here with Griff. Maybe he always liked running better than standing still. Maybe moving was all that counted.

They ate in silence. Stacy came by to refill Baby’s water and Griff’s coffee. When Griff set his plate to the side, he asked Stacy for a slice of pecan pie, then asked if Baby wanted dessert.

“No thanks,” he said, and Stacy left again. Baby was sure she called Debora by now, or texted her maybe, and hoped Debora wasn’t worried for him. She probably was, she always was. Things still felt new and precarious because of how little they saw each other. Shortly after the first time, Debora got switched to the breakfast shift—better tips, she said, trying to lighten the mood. She’d stayed up to tell him that night even though she had work in a few hours, and he didn’t know then that between two and four in the morning were the only times they’d get to see each other anymore for months on end. The light from the city fell through the loft windows and all he could see was the outline of her profile.

He reached out and touched her hand and she threaded their fingers together and he held her. He knew what it meant, something so simple as a shift change having such a drastic effect on their lives. Baby delivered pizzas at night, and now Debora would be working breakfast and taking classes in the afternoon, and by the time she got home, Baby would be gone. Baby could quit, but clean jobs were hard to come by for ex-cons, and he was lucky for the one he had. It wasn’t like he had any of Doc’s pay left after prison, and he didn’t think he’d make enough in lunch tips at Goodfellas to warrant his own shift change request.

I’m sorry, Baby, Debora said, reaching out to trail a finger over his cheek. She hadn’t called him that since their first time together, and he didn’t know if it was his name anymore or just an affectionate murmur like how his mom used to use it. He liked it, liked being her baby, but he wasn’t about to ask for it any more than she gave.

Baby didn’t know what to say, so he kissed her, and kept kissing her, until she took his hand and guided it down into her shorts. He stroked her and she let out a soft sigh against his chin. She was tired, he knew, and he’d be up until dawn anyway, so he kissed down her neck and chest and stomach, and settled between her legs. He didn’t know then that he wouldn’t see her awake again for three more days, until her day off, and then only for an hour before she fell asleep.

Griff leaned back against the booth, one arm draped on the corner of it, and said, “I’m glad I ran into you today.” He paused for a long time, and Baby thought maybe it would end there, some enigmatic declaration. Then he added, “I got an offer for you.”

Not a favor, Baby thought. An offer. That was never the language Doc used. Griff wasn’t looking at him the way Doc always did, either, like Baby was his whole world. Like he needed Baby to breathe. Griff wasn’t looking at him like anything, except maybe a little nervous given the lack of eye contact, the way he rubbed the back of his neck with his palm.

Baby didn’t reply. He put his hand on his knee and pretended Debora was holding it under the table, that she was sitting next to him, looking at him like he should be strong enough to say no and walk away, like Griff was different than Bats and wouldn’t shoot him from across the table in the middle of the day just for looking at him wrong. He had nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. Griff had more honor than Bats, less than Doc. More level-headed than Buddy, less single-minded than Darling.

Stacy set the pie on the table and, sensing the tension, picked up the old check to fix the total and didn’t say anything. When she was gone, Griff met Baby’s eyes and said, “I want you to drive for me.”

Baby wasn’t ready, couldn’t be ready, because the voice in his head that sounded an awful lot like Debora told him to say no, and the voice in his heart that sounded like Doc told him to say yes, just one more, get some money and quit the pizza place. Go wherever you want. Do whatever you want. Run, run, run.

Griff leaned forward, elbows on the table, “Listen, it ain’t what you think. I got a business. A real one. Filed with the state and everything. Employees with I-9s and W-2s and health insurance.”

Baby’s eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, I know, right? But I got a kid now. Things are different. Anyway, it’s an auto shop.”

“I’m not going to sunset for you,” Baby said. It was the thing he hated most about working for Doc, seeing all those good cars crushed into boxes.

“Nah,” Griff said, “it’s not like that. You know who most of my clients are?”

“Guys with nasal problems.”

Griff laughed. “No, no, nothing like that.” He leaned forward even more and ducked his head down, like it was a big secret. “Middle-aged women.”

Baby heard the words, barely, and read his lips, but the message still wasn’t reaching him.

“Yeah, it’s like—I’m the only one who doesn’t upcharge ‘em for bein’ ladies. They’re divorced, widowed, rich as fuck. And I give ‘em the same price I give the guys. Then they tell all their friends, and suddenly I got a whole book of business full of the ex-housewives of Atlanta.”

“So what do you want from me?”

Griff grinned. “I need a guy to do pick-ups and drop-offs during work hours. You go get the cars, you drive ‘em to the shop, I fix ‘em up, you drive ‘em back. And if you wanna go joyriding a little in the back lot, I won’t say nothing about it.”

Baby normally kept an arsenal of scripted responses in his head for this-and-that situations, but this particular one was so far out of his lane that nothing came to mind.

“And Christ,” Griff continued, “these ladies, they don’t fuck around. They got Bimmers, Mercedes, Lexus, top of the line shit. I went into this thinking women bought cars for the cup holder count, but nah, man. They want speed same as you and me—”

Baby interrupted him. “So no drugs?”

“No drugs.”

“No sunsets?”

“No sunsets.”

“No guns?”

“No guns.”

“No gigs involving banks, post offices, or armored vehicles?”

“What, you won’t do my deposit in the mornings?”

“I mean…you know what I mean,” Baby said, looking around. The diner was empty. Next song, “Hard to Tell” by OCMS, another of Debora’s songs. She must have taken over the entire iPod.

“Nothing that would put either of us in prison. You pick up, drop off, do a few oil changes, flirt a little with the cougars. Do your whole—” He waved his hand ambiguously at Baby. “—whatever it is that you do that makes people wanna wrap you in a blanket and give you candy. Keep ‘em coming back. That’s it.”

“Nine to five,” Baby said. “Like Dolly.”

“Nine to five like Dolly,” Griff replied. “And I’ll double whatever you’re making at the pizza joint.”

“How big’s the lot?” Baby asked.

“Big enough for trouble,” Griff said. His grin turned crooked, nervousness gone.

“Hey, Miles,” Stacy called from the kitchen. She had the phone in her hand with a palm over the receiver. “Debora’s on the phone for you.”

Debora would tell him no, that he’d find a better gig someday, and so would she, and they could move out of Atlanta once Joe had passed away and finally be free to hit the road. But, Baby thought, he was already free. Freedom was coming home to Debora curled up asleep in bed, changing out of his uniform and climbing in beside her, holding her until he fell asleep too. Freedom was waking up a couple hours later to the watery light of dawn, the feeling of her lips brushing his forehead, his cheek, whispering that she loved him before getting out of bed. Freedom was waking up again at one in the afternoon to a note tacked on the fridge with Debora’s recommended tracklist for the day. It was dinner with Joe on Sundays. Weekday evenings spent mixing songs and going on walks. Drinking coffee and eating junk food. Dancing and singing whenever he wanted and never having to be someone he wasn't. Calling Debora on her breaks and listening to her talk about her customers or her classes or anything else on her mind. It was the neverending playlist of his life, and for once he wanted to make do with what he had instead of running off who-knew-where and hoping the grass would be greener.

Next song, “Ooh La La” by Faces.

Baby nodded. “Alright,” he told Griff. “When do I start?”

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to Atlanta-based readers for not doing more (any) research on location. 
> 
> [tumblr](http://www.bettydays.tumblr.com) | [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betty_days)


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